Another reason on why I don't want to use railguns for ship battles is because of the distances that are likely involved. True, it fires projectiles at high velocities, but the target would see that and dodge it. In the book, a ship that deployed a railgun fired it at a target that was several AUs away that was chasing a friendly ship that was heading to a outer planet in the system. The problem is, at the time the gun fired, the target wasn't even chasing the friendly. Nineteen days later, the target is chasing the friendly, and the two projectiles the railgun fired, both managed to hit the target. That doesn't seem realistic to me.

Indeed.

Whoever was commanding that ship does not know how to properly use a mass driver.

Mass drivers are the bargain price CQC weapons of space. For military organizations that can't afford to deck all of their ships with close-range DEWs, mass drivers are the next best thing since they run under the exact the same principle, but with mass instead of radiation.

Other than that, there is the seldom mentioned advantage of mass drivers being incredibly easy to protect from enemy fire. Mass drivers are basically just long straight magnetic tunnels which you can place anywhere on the ship, even at the center. Long-range DEWs would look more like giant radar dishes since radiation tends to scatter after a certain distance, necessitating the use of very intense focusing.

In the same book series in a later part of it, the ship in it had roughly the same hab modules as mine, but it "folded" them for acceleration. I'm not sure what that means. And a wall turning into a floor, wouldn't that happen only during the acceleration and deceleration?

Funny thing about space is that there isn't any natural force that can "correct" you from an ac/decelerated state. Every time the ship speeds up or slows down, you'll have to readjust the habitat's orientation manually.

The ship used a combination of using the reaction mass, shield cap, and a electromagnetic field to protect it against interstellar particles and radiation. I'm thinking of using only the last two only with the inside of the shield cap constructed with radiation resistant materials.

A solid combination, I'd say. Perfect for emergencies wherein any single one of the systems fail.

Basically. I think the original idea came from the Honor Harrington book series. What they did was basically detonate a low kiloton nuke and in the instants before the equipment was destroyed, a collector collected all the energy from the detonation it could and shoot it as what I think was a X-Ray laser. Bomb-pumped lasers missiles was what made up most major star nations entire ship-to-ship missile armament, pirates used regular kiloton nukes.

From a brief description, the missiles are quite large and the components are likely cheaply made if thats what they throw around.

Funny thing about space is that there isn't any natural force that can "correct" you from an ac/decelerated state. Every time the ship speeds up or slows down, you'll have to readjust the habitat's orientation manually.

I'll think I'll go with the rotating section, likely more cheaper than rotating pods and crew and passengers won't be occupying the hab pods, the crew will be awake until acceleration begins, then they'll be in cyro stasis for the entire journey until they reach the outer part of the target system.

Whoever was commanding that ship does not know how to properly use a mass driver.

Mass drivers are the bargain price CQC weapons of space. For military organizations that can't afford to deck all of their ships with close-range DEWs, mass drivers are the next best thing since they run under the exact the same principle, but with mass instead of radiation.

Other than that, there is the seldom mentioned advantage of mass drivers being incredibly easy to protect from enemy fire. Mass drivers are basically just long straight magnetic tunnels which you can place anywhere on the ship, even at the center. Long-range DEWs would look more like giant radar dishes since radiation tends to scatter after a certain distance, necessitating the use of very intense focusing.

What about the MAC guns from Halo, I think they out-ranged at least most Covenant weaponry, including the pulse lasers they had. I can't be sure though since the last Halo book I read was years ago.

Speaking of weapons, you have yet to comment on using sand or metal balls instead of explosive missile warheads.

Logged

In space, no one can hear you scream unless your transmitting it on the right radio frequency.

What about the MAC guns from Halo, I think they out-ranged at least most Covenant weaponry, including the pulse lasers they had. I can't be sure though since the last Halo book I read was years ago.

Indeed, a MAC round, any mass driver round, actually, is capable of just that.

The only problem is that after a certain distance, mass drivers become easy to evade, since the target now has enough leg time to actually dodge the round.

For example, there isn't much of a difference speed-wise between mass drivers and DEWs when your target is on the same planet. However, if you're going to snipe something from, let's say, a quarter of an AU away, the mass driver's relatively slower speed becomes readily apparent.

Rule of thumb: The slower your target is, the larger the effective range of a mass driver becomes.